'Cinderella Skeleton' launches Pantochino season in New Haven

Joe Meyers, Staff Writer

Updated 12:25 pm, Thursday, October 20, 2011

The life of an expatriate American couple in Paris begins to unravel in the new Amy Herzog play "Belleville," which is running through Nov. 12 at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven and seems destined to provoke lively post-performance discussions.

A mix of domestic drama and thriller, the play follows a young married couple -- Zack and Abby -- who are in France because of the husband's job at a pediatric AIDS clinic.

Abby has a history of mental instability for which she has been taking medication and Zack seems to be hiding work and financial problems from her.

"I wanted to write a play about a big central lie in a marriage," Herzog said in a recent phone interview.

The writer said she was partially inspired by a French case in which a husband kept a secret life from his spouse for years that eventually exploded in violence. "That was an extreme and sensational case, but I became interested in how women end up in situations like that ... how women become that susceptible," Herzog said.

"Belleville" was commissioned by Yale Rep. The production comes at the start of a theater year that will be very busy for Herzog. Last season, the writer received rave reviews for a play that had a very limited run off-off-Broadway -- "4000 Miles." The show about the relationship between an elderly Greenwich Village radical and her grandson will be given a full production later this season at Lincoln Center.

Herzog said it is the nature of a playwright's life that scripts can stack up for a while unproduced and then suddenly a wonderful wave of public stage activity commences.

For a period a few years ago, Herzog worked as an actor and even put together a one-woman piece that she performed. Now, she says, after working with many terrific actors over the past few years Herzog plans to focus on writing.

"I love acting -- and if, for some reason, the chance to be in something came along I might do it -- but after working with some of the best stage actors in the world, I don't think I'll be getting new headshots," the writer said, laughing.

West Haven writer and director Bert Bernardi opened a children's show, "Cinderella Skeleton," at Arts Hall in New Haven this weekend -- the first public production of his new nonprofit company Pantochino Productions that he co-founded with Jimmy Johansmeyer.

The slightly ghoulish musical comedy is based on a popular children's book by Robert D. San Souci, which transfers the Cinderella story to Boneyard Acres.

Bernardi built a huge following for his children's theater productions at Bridgeport's Downtown Cabaret Theatre over two decades, but decided to strike out on his own last season. The company has been doing touring productions in schools, but is kicking off the new season with public performances at the ACES Center for the Arts on Audubon Street in New Haven.

"It's exciting ... we are smack dab in the middle of the process," Bernardi said in a recent phone interview before a rehearsal.

"The show is a lot of fun ... contemporary rock with a few power ballads thrown in," he added.

"Our theater is gorgeous," he said, "and here's a little factoid. It's a former synagogue and the place where Marilyn Monroe married Arthur Miller.

"I love the idea of doing our shows in an arts high school where people are learning and performing," he said.

Pantochino is presenting eight shows over the next two weekends -- through Oct. 30.